In the short-lived DC comic Atari Force, the friendly toy robot, Bob, who could only say his name cheerfully, went evil after one too many flushes down the toilet. It could still say nothing more than "Bob", but it said it in a much more menacing voice to the point it was obvious that if its vocabulary were bigger, it would've been saying the trope title verbatim.

The Ultimate Marvel incarnation of Galactus, a swarm of killer robots called Gah Lak Tus, is dedicated to consuming and wiping out all organic life which it finds disgusting. The swarm repeatedly states its mission: "Consume". This changes when they meet 616 Galactus after he ends up in the Ultimate verse thanks to a tear in the fabric of the multiverse. They attempt to consume him at first, repeating "Consume". Then they switch to "Merge". Finally, "Serve".

The Guardian Units in The Transformers have a distressing tendency to revert to this at the drop of a hat, and happen to be incredibly well-built and well-armed. Even worse, they seem to be the exclusive property of the Autobots.

Forbidden Planet: Despite what the poster would have you believe, this is also averted: Robbie is pretty tame to start with and has a Restraining Bolt that makes it impossible for him to harm any other "rational being".

Literature

Isaac Asimov created the "Three Laws of Robotics" specifically to avert this trope. And a fairly big portion of his stories are about robots going haywire because of those laws. In really clever ways, mind you.

While the Daleks in Doctor Who with their iconic "Exterminate! Ex-ter-minate!" are not robots (they are living creatures inside machines giving them greater mobility), Terry Nation - who originally created them - apparently forgot this at least once (Destiny of the Daleks).

In an early appearance, Daleks apparently had some religious fervour: 'Align and advance! Advance to attack! Attack and destroy! Destroy and rejoice!'

The revival version of the Cybermen have "DELETE" (although they are human brains in metal bodies, they have been reprogrammed in such a way that they may as well be robots). Naturally, they ended up fighting the Daleks in their second appearance, leading to lots of back-and-forth shouting.

Lost in Space: This line is often mis-attributed to The Robot who does use the term "Destroy" several times in the pilot during his rampage. It's Killer Android IDAK Alpha 12 who says this in the episode titled, "Revolt of the Androids." Despite its use in only one episode, it became a more famous line than "Destroy" and was thus attributed to the main character robot.

Mystery Science Theater 3000's Mike Nelson built a robot in episode #602, following the lead of ex-host Joel Hodgson, who built fellow snarkers Crow and Tom Servo. However, Mike's robot seemed only able to shout "DESTROY.. DESTROY.. DESTROY..". After he shuts it down, Crow and Tom force Mike to promise not to try and build another.

Warren's robot April on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When he breaks it to her that he no longer loves her, she shorts out and goes into red-vision, growling angrily. Apparently she would even have been willing to attack Warren, had he not shifted her focus to Buffy.

The "mandroid" in Nebulous, when it goes into murderous mode, begins chanting "MUST KILL AND/OR MAIM NEBULOUS". This is particularly absurd because, as Nebulous attempts to talk it into submission, he responds with the normal, erudite conversation he'd been performing up until that point before going back into the chant.

Tabletop Games

The robot supervillain Mechanon has been trying to wipe out all organic life in every edition of Champions to date.

Bots in Paranoia have an Asimov circuit to prevent this from happening. This chip is removable. The Corpore Metal society enjoys removing these chips. You should know how this goes.

The Iron Men of Warhammer 40,000, who ended up losing the war, but in the process sent humanity into a galaxy-wide dark age.

Older editions of Dungeons & Dragons did this with golems, the magical equivalent of robots. Many golems had a certain chance every round of combat to simply flip out and try to kill everything in sight, as the golems of Jewish folklore often did.

In BattleTech, the Star League Defense Force and the Terran Hegemony experimented with AI-controlled warships and attack drones. While the AI ships were far superior over human crews as life support could be removed in favor of more weaponry, the SLDF discovered that if an AI is active during a hyperspace jump, it suffers essentially a psychotic breakdown and goes berserk, attempting to target and destroy every nearby contact. Pure AI-controlled interstellar ships had to be abandoned in favor of ships with a skeleton crew that disables the AI before a jump, then reactivates it at the destination. These systems became Lost Technology in the 300 years of total war that followed the dissolution of the Star League and exodus of the SLDF.

Plenty of Martian Robomen in Rocket Age fall into this behaviour, typically due to being absolutely ancient and still operating on a war-time footing from the Erisian invasion. There might even be some hunting Nazis in a conquered Martian principality...

Video Games

In Chrono Trigger, almost all the robots in 2300 AD act like this despite having obviously been designed to be laborers. The only aversions are Robo who joins your party and is quite nice, and Johnny and his gang who are definitely jerks but would much rather race you for fun than kill you.

Final Fantasy IX has an army of manufactured Black Mages who shout "KILL!" when they attack. The Black Waltzes aren't much better; "I EXIST ONLY TO KILL! I EXIST ONLY TO KILL!" Some Black Mages develop independent will and a better vocabulary, and form their own village. Another Black Mage, Vivi, is adopted by Quale, and later joins Zidane's party as they take on Kuja.

Ogres tend to yell in things like "Rawr me smash you!" and other things in You No Take Candle.

In Robot Alchemic Drive, one of the main robots the player controls will eventually activate its forbidden "Human Genocide Mode," which is pretty self explanatory. It even keeps droning, in the protagonist's head, "DESTROY IT ALL."

E-123 Omega is a textbook Turned Against Their Masters variety who is really pissed off about Eggman shutting him down and leaving him. And he's very entertaining in battle. ANNIHILATION! KILL! FIRE, FIRE!

In Spore, the Big Bad are The Grox, who all talk like this, being cybernetic gerbils.

The Slylandro probes in Star Control 2 begin by transmitting "We come in peace" before their buggy programming override activates and compels them to "Break target into component compounds/materials".

Marathon: A Rampant AI will shift into this mindset during the second stage: Anger. This takes the form of basically a giant virtual temper tantrum as the AI attempts to cause as much destruction as it can. After a while the AI calms down and enters the Jealousy stage, and that's when it really becomes dangerous...

In Axiom Verge, the bosses have just this to say to the protagonist before fighting:

Arguably, in The Animatrix, the robot that signs the unconditional surrender treaty at the UN, when it calmly says "Hand over your flesh and a new world awaits you. We demand it." Right before it self-destructs in an atomic blast, killing everyone at the UN

The R.E.G.I.S. Mk. V in Megas XLR tells people to not panic it while destroying most everything in its path.

R.E.G.I.S. Mk. V: "Do not panic. You will all die."

Also R.E.C.R., in a spoof of 1950's-era panic.

R.E.C.R.: Everything is the enemy!

R.E.C.R.: But I must destroy and protect!

R.E.C.R.: I must destroy all enemies! Because all enemies are MY enemies!

Mr. Burns orders robot workers, and the box says "100% Loyal." The next scene is Burns and Smithers being chased by the robots, who are droning "Crush, kill, destroy!" over and over.

In another episode, Bart's class has a robot telling them about the new "fun museum" in town. Bored, Bart glances out the window and sees the robot's operator sitting in a tree. Bart hits him with a rock, knocking him out and making the robot slump over. After a second, it utters "Command link severed. Default setting... CRUSH. KILL. DESTROY." and starts throttling Principal Skinner, to the delight of the children.

In "Itchy And Scratchy Land," the cat and mouse robots have a protocol that ensures that they only attack each other; their HUD commands them to "KILL" their opposite number. Inevitably, they malfunction, and the "KILL" command is demanded of human targets.

Brenda the Negotia-bot, who is sent by the Springfield police to reign in some order for the Simpson household after a failed tabletop game session. She says she's programmed to talk in a calm and constructive manner... only to promptly go all "Destroy! Destroy!" on the family.

The Transformers: Used nearly word for word, wherein mad Decepticon leader Galvatron undergoes word association therapy (you know you're Ax-Crazy when the Decepticons send you to a psychiatrist.) and the first things he can think of are "Kill! Smash! Destroy!" Asked to continue, he obliges with "Rend! Mangle! Distort!". Afterwards he blew up the planet where he got the therapy; it was less than successful. Clearly, he is a bot of his word.

Roberto was created by a team of engineers who actually wanted to build a criminally insane robot.

Roberto: "AND THEY FAILED!"

Vending Machine Bot: "But doesn't that mean-*Is stabbed*"

Mostly averted with Bender, who is generally able to suppress his inner desire to kill humans. However, it does sometimes pop out in the form of the occasional Freudian Slip or sleep-talking.

Bender: "Hey sexy mama, wanna kill all humans?"

Robot Santa is at least willing to restrict his rampages to one night a year. Unfortunately he has much more firepower than Bender or Roberto.

The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3: Mario provides a non-robotic example when Bowser and his son, Kooky (Ludwig von Koopa,) puts him under his control with a mind-control helmet. When Luigi shows up to rescue him, Bowser orders Mario to "Smash! Crush! Pound! Destroy!" him.

Unfortunately, Kooky get the helmet put upon himself, much to Bowser's chagrin and terror!

In the Gargoyles episode, "Upgrade," when the Manhattan Clan gang up on the Coyote robot and Goliath rips out and squishes the controlling head, the rest of the robot gets up and blindly flails "Destroy, Destroy..." before being flattened by a subway train.

Courage the Cowardly Dog had a Monster of the Week that was a cruise-missile-delivered carrot that turned into a bomb. Anyone who ate the carrot began inflating to house-busting proportions before exploding themselves, and Courage had to dive through Murial's body to find the tumor-like carrot growth and shut it down. No, it does not make any more sense in context. However, when Courage gets inside, for some reason the carrot can talk, is wearing an army helmet and badge, and is chanting "Grow! Expand! Explode!" in ever-increasing volume and excitement.

In an episode of Class of 3000, the kids decided to replace all their teachers with celebrities. Their new dance teacher, a parody of Optimus Prime, kept shouting this phrase as he pirouetted through walls.

In the Family Guy episode "Hannah Banana", Brian and Stewie find that Miley Cyrus is actually an android. At Brian's suggestion, Stewie tries reprogramming her so Brian can have sex with her, but instead she goes haywire and starts running around saying "MILEY SMASH!"

In another episode, Peter vies for a promotion by having a robot do paperwork for him, which he assures his boss has no emotions and is programmed never to harm humans. It then proceeds to throttle Peter while shouting "Angry!"

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy